Tuesday, November 11, 2008

IT’S HARDLY A MANDATE—

I am quite tired of hearing the national media slobbering such phrases as “...a mandate” when fawning over Sen. Barack Obama’s recent victory in the US presidential election.

Years ago, when I was director of elections in Richland County, it was a truism that elections were commonly won or lost by margins of 5 percent of the total votes cast.

I suspect that remains true to this day.

In this case Obama prevailed by a margin of just 6.5 percent.

Forty six point one percent of the voters preferred his opponent.

While Obama garnered some 65,400,000 votes nation-wide, 57,400,000 people voted against him.

Yes, it was an historic election and Sen. Obama clearly won.

The nation should be hopeful for an improvement in the quality of life for all Americans.

It should be hopeful we regain our status as a trusted member of the world’s community of nations.

I hope the president-elect does not confuse his inauguration with a coronation, and he proceeds with measured caution knowing nearly half of the voters were against him.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Perhaps "mandate" is too strong a term to use when describing the results of the recent election. However, by your own admission, it was a significant win. I believe it's called a landslide with only a few more percent in the win category. Everything is relative. I'm curious--in 2000 Al Gore won the popular vote by a respectable amount yet George W. Bush became our president with less than half the people voting for him. What do you call that?

Terry Wolf said...

Hi Ron:

If you are going to quote me on my blog please do it more carefully. The phrase "Significant win" was your choice of words, not mine.

Anonymous said...

Readers might want to look up some earlier election results on the following website. http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/
NARA | Federal Register | U.S. Electoral College
The years 1980 and 1984 would more clearly define "mandate" in our more recent elections.

Anonymous said...

Terry--I wasn't attempting to quote you with the term "significant win." I was referring to your comment "Obama clearly won." My whole point was that the difference between a 50-50election and a landslide is only about 20%. The biggest win in election history was around 61%, and that was LBJ over Goldwater in 1964.